Sanya Phoenix International Airport

Sanya Phoenix International is the main gateway to Hainan Island, China's tropical southernmost province and the country's only free-trade port with special tourism and duty-free status. Located on the western edge of Sanya at 92 ft (28 m) elevation, SYX is the second-busiest airport on Hainan after Haikou Meilan (HAK) and one of the top leisure-driven airports in Asia, with passenger volumes that routinely exceed 20M in normal years — a figure sustained almost entirely by Chinese domestic tourism to the beaches of Yalong Bay, Haitang Bay, and Dadonghai. Hainan Airlines is the dominant carrier and bases a substantial fleet at SYX, supported by a long list of mainland operators including China Southern, China Eastern, Air China, Spring Airlines, and XiamenAir. The airport handles 185 scheduled routes across 44 airlines to 94 destinations, with heavy trunk volume to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and the Yangtze Delta secondary cities. International and regional service reaches Seoul, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, and Moscow, the last a legacy of long-standing Russian charter programs to the island. A single 11,155 ft (3,400 m) concrete runway (08/26) is oriented along the coast, and the terminal complex has been expanded multiple times to absorb the growth of Hainan's offshore duty-free economy; Sanya hosts some of the world's largest duty-free retail complexes, and SYX functions as the primary airside entry for shoppers. A second airport, Sanya Hongtangwan, is under construction on reclaimed land nearby to eventually supplement Phoenix's capacity. The airport is integrated with the Hainan high-speed rail loop, giving direct train access to the rest of the island from the terminal building.